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Inspiring thoughts, and a great video about being a gamer in our world.

Inspiring thoughts, and a great video about being a gamer in our world.

05-18-2009, 08:31 AM

TED might just be my all time favorite website. I find it is the best the web has to offer in terms of insight and novel thinking.

Today I found this talk by a game designer with a video by one of his student. This video is very inspiring and brilliantly made. I encourage everyone to take a look and think for a second what it means to be a gamer for them and how it relates you to the world outside, how it changes your perspective on that world. Not so surprisingly, it even has some PR footage in it!

I for one know that playing in this large online community has actually (contrary to popular beliefs) improved my social skills in some very useful ways. Even if it may only be the realization that there will be smacktards and griefers wherever you go :), and that you can't afford to spend too much consciousness on them.

I'm also convinced we are only at the start of this, and that -however geeky a reputation we may all have now- most of society will come our way into these shreds of virtual realities that are coalescing into something we cannot grasp yet. Whether they want to or not.

This line between virtual, and with a certain disdain :p, 'real' is something that I bet plays an important role in the lives of all the people that e.g. visit this forum.

In accordance with this topic, I would find it interesting to hear
--->your thoughts about the role of gaming and virtual realities in your life, or in the society as a whole. As an avid SF adept, I'm also interested in
--->what your visions on the future evolution of our virtual worlds might be like.

I for one know that playing in this large online community has actually (contrary to popular beliefs) improved my social skills in some very useful ways. Even if it may only be the realization that there will be smacktards and griefers wherever you go :), and that you can't afford to spend too much consciousness on them.

Personal the way I improved my social skills including talking to strangers was by a two fold plan;
a) Give directions to people lost in London, including walking them there if I can't describe it well enough (I'm like a free tour guide really)
b) Going into the local steam room and just starting up a conversation with who ever is in there, I know quite a few local people just by doing that

Before you judge a man, try walking a mile in their shoes first. That way your a mile away and you have their shoes.

Comment

Re: Inspiring thoughts, and a great video about being a gamer in our world.

I think it is amazing, as you've said. That was an awesome video. Very though provoking and made the technology, which has advanced so fast, and been taken for granted already due to the speed in which is steadily improves very neat when we take a step back and look at it. How it's evolved, how much social interaction and IMAGINATION can be turned into "virtual" REALITY. No limits, like in the "real world."

Very, very cool. The thing that comes to my mind is we must not lose sense of reality when it comes to the real world. Just look at how many people do not go out into the woods, fish, hunt, etc. We shouldn't completely substitute real life with virtual reality. Only thing I can see being a problem in the future. But other than that, we must find a middle ground and value both technology and the basics of the real world as well.

Just think of how advanced and sophisticated games and virtual experiences will be 10 years from now, even a year or two will bring many amazing things. I can only imagine.

Comment

a) Give directions to people lost in London, including walking them there if I can't describe it well enough (I'm like a free tour guide really)

Funny, I do the same. It is one of my favorite things to do. I also appreciate it as I have had to count on other people I couldn't even speak with (Thailand e.g.) to help me when I had no possibility of helping myself, and they did. It's kind of repaying you know.

In my own life, I've always seen an odd opposition in loving to disappear into virtual words, and loving to be in nature and feel the elements around me. This video made me think maybe there isn't an opposition at all. It's hard to put words on it. I might say it is a way of immersing myself in a world that is more rich to the senses than the at times stale city life.

On the future, I think we do need to take care not to disappear into the virtual. Sometimes I can feel a desire to do so. And I am 100% convinced that many people will do just that in the near future. In fact it is happening now; in JKorea and Japan it is an uncommon, but more and more frequent phenomenon that people play a games to the death, either cybercafe's, or at home in their parents house. WOW FTW!

I'm pleased that I'm not the only one to find this inspiring. Thanks for the comments.

Comment

Re: Inspiring thoughts, and a great video about being a gamer in our world.

I have a few thoughts on the video, first off, I was impressed by this guys presentation, I thought it was pretty interesting and entertaining. Also, I like the general message behind the presentation even if it was a bit forced and "arty". For a "visionary game designer" most of the titles he's worked on were pretty mediocre and that surprised and disappointed me.

I couldn't tell if the video was purposefully trying to take things to an extreme or not. It just seems like it's completely forced they're trying to big up the games industry as some amazing way to enlighten mankind or his "prodigé" student is just mentally disturbed. I'm going for the latter. His lifestyle is not healthy. Being able to distinguish between reality and what is not, is what makes you mentally stable. I have no objection, personally, to how he lives his life but it just seems very unhealthy to me. The video seems to want to take things to an absurd extreme which is completely abstract.

Games are just data, electrical pulses and images on our screens. Sure it can feel real at the time, this is because they are a simulation, this is what they are designed to do. All of us like to get lost in our games once in a while to chill out and get away from our normal lives, this is fun, you can experience and feel new emotions. If I happened to like taking psychedelics and recreational drugs once in a while to get away from my life and experience new things that's all good. But if I believe these experiences and become a "psychonaut" believing these experiences are reality then I am mentally disturbed. This is a strong comparison with millions of other factors in the equation but nonetheless I feel it's an appropriate one.

small edit: 46% gamers being female?? No way is this an accurate statistic. Unless you class a gamer as someone who plays Rock Band at a party or The Sims a few hours a week then maybe. I think most people would agree that being a "true gamer" requires being a little it more caught up in your virtual activities. Still I feel this statistic is pretty biased.